HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY

To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key.

Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window.

THE USAGE PANEL

The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.

Word History: Wassail is an English holiday drink consisting of spiced mulled wine, ale, or some other fermented beverage such as hard cider or mead. The word is also used as a verb: to drink someone's health, especially in the course of traveling around one's neighborhood, singing songs at neighbors' houses and receiving food and drink in return, is to wassail—as in the traditional carol "Here We Come A-Wassailing."¶Both the noun wassail and its associated verb come from one of the most popular expressions used in medieval England in toasting someone's health. The Middle English toast Wæshæil! comes from the Old Norse salutation Ves heill! which had been brought to Britain by the invading Danes in the 9th Century AD. The Anglo-Saxons, for their part, had a corresponding salutation, Wes þū hāl! which they used as a general greeting—variations of it can be found in Beowulf (Wæs þū, Hroðgar, hāl! says the young hero when he meets King Hrothgar) and in the West Saxon Gospels (at the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel greets Mary with Hāl wes þū!).¶These greetings and toasts literally mean "Be healthy!"—a sentiment that survives in the Modern English toast To your health! and in many toasts in other languages, such as the Spanish Salud! and the French Santé! which both simply mean "health." The Old English hāl, incidentally, means not only "healthy" (it is the origin of Modern English hale) but also "undamaged, entire" (it is also the origin of the word whole).

The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

This website is best viewed in Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, or Safari. Some characters in pronunciations and etymologies cannot be displayed properly in Internet Explorer.